Source materials for fishing in antiquity and the early middle ages

When Poul Holm first mentioned the idea of extending the timescale of the HMAP project all the
way back to antiquity, my immediate reaction was that it sounded pretty hopeless. It is a well-
established truism that in ancient history, there are few quantitative data and even fewer time
series.1 For the same reason, ancient economic history as a discipline tends to focus on patterns of
behaviour, socio-economic questions and so forth, rather than on economy in the “hard” sense, and
has for the last thirty years been dominated by the so-called “primitivist” paradigm.
On closer reflection, the idea did not seem so absurd after all. While the sources that we have for
fishing in the medieval, early modern and modern periods are much better, they are not first-hand
data. No one has actually counted the fish in the world’s oceans. What HMAP strives to establish is
reliable information on a) marine animal populations and b) the impact of human activity, i.e.
harvesting of marine animal populations, but in practice the evidence for a) is indirect and largely
derived from b).
Once we accept that applying indirect evidence is legitimate and necessary, it may be possible to
make some meaningful statements about ancient and early medieval fish stocks. Instead of
searching for ancient parallels to the fishery statistics, tithe-books and tax records of the early
modern periods – a waste of time, since such records are not preserved and probably never existed –
we should look at all possible approaches to the problem and all possible sources.

Literary sources
One reason that medieval and more recent fishing is fairly well documented is that fishing was
subject to taxes and tithes.2 Unfortunately from our viewpoint (but not from that of the fishermen)
there seems to have been no systematic taxation of sea fishing in the Roman Empire,3 nor, which is
perhaps more surprising, in the Byzantine Empire. The fiscal administration of Byzantium was

1
The leading scholar within ancient quantitative economic studies has been Richard Duncan-Jones (The Economy of the
Roman Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974; Structure and scale in the Roman economy, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990) but his work, based on an exhaustive search through the extant sources, actually
reveals how little we know about the quantitative aspects of the ancient economy.
2
Cf. Joan Alegret’s contribution to this conference
3
See, e.g., Peter Ørsted: Salt, Fish, and the Sea in the Roman Empire, in Inge Nielsen and Hanne Sigismund Nielsen
(ed.), Meals in a Social Context (Aarhus Studies in Mediterranean Antiquity, 1). Aarhus: Aarhus University Press,
1998, pp. 13-35.

1
detailed and intricate, in one word, Byzantine; but sea fish was one of the few resources that did not
come within its scope.4
While quantitative data are lacking, in qualitative terms the sources at our disposal can tell us a
good deal about ancient fish stocks in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. First, species. What
species were present? The data pertaining to this question are in fact quite detailed. One needs only
to consult one of the two standard handbooks on the subject, d’Arcy Thompson’s Glossary of Greek
Fishes or Strömberg’s Griechische Fischnamen to appreciate the range and detail of ancient fish
nomenclature, reflecting the detailed knowledge of ancient fishermen and the vast number of
references to fish and fishing that are scattered throughout classical literature.5
For a general impression of ancient fisheries and fish stocks, the best starting-point is the Halieutika
of Oppianus, written in the late second century AD. The Halieutika is a didactic poem of more than
3,000 hexameters, preserved in its entirety and supplemented by an ancient prose paraphrase which
though only partially preserved helps us to decipher the somewhat intricate poetic language of the
poem itself. The recent been edition by Fritz Fajen with a German translation is in many respects an
improvement on the older edition of A.W. Mair in the Loeb series.6
Oppian’s book is no first-hand report, rather a digest of second-hand and third-hand information,
but it provides us with an overview of migration routes, seasonal variations, and other aspects of
direct interest to HMAP. If one were to try and locate the literary references of d’Arcy Thompson or
Strömberg on a map of the Mediterreanean and correlate them with the information given by
Oppian and in the Natural History of the Elder Pliny, it might provide us with a good impression of
which fish species were present where and at what time. It is a quite simple exercise that, to my
knowledge, has not been attempted so far.
So far, I have considered only surces purporting or attempting to describe the contemporary
situation, i.e. the state of fishing in the writer’s own lifetime or the recent past. I have ignored those
that are “historical” in the strict sense, i.e. those that purport to tell us about past fishing or compare
past conditions to those of the writer’s time. On the face of it, such evidence may seem highly
useful; in fact it is, however, largely anecdotal and, at best, based on second or third hand
information, hearsay and the writer’s own memory. Furthermore, there is the problem of what we

4
See, e.g., Franz Dölger, Beiträge zur Geschichte der byzantinischen Finanzverwaltung besonders des 10. und 11.
Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart: Teubner, 1927, esp. pp. 12ff.
5
d’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, A Glossary of Greek Fishes, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947; Reinhold
Strömberg, Studien zur Etymologie und Bildung der griechischen Fischnamen, Gothenburg: Wettergren and Kerber,
1943
6
Oppian, Colluthus, Tryphiodorus, with an English translation by A.W. Mair (Loeb Classical Library), London:
Heinemann, 1927; Oppianos, Halieutica, edited and translated by Fritz Fajen, Stuttgart: Teubner, 1999.

2
might call the mythical baseline. When writers describe life in an earlier age, certain idealising
themes recur. Young people were better behaved; the forests were more extensive; fish was so
abundant and cheap that everyone could afford it. This may be based on solid evidence; if may be
based on anecdotal information; or it may merely reflect a shared ideal about a “golden age” in the
past.

Pictorial representations
Now, the works of Thompson and Strömberg cited above deal only with the textual sources, but
there is a considerable body of pictorial evidence for ancient fish and fishing. Our pictorial evidence
for fishing comes very largely from mosaics, not necessarily because mosaics were the only
medium used to depict fish, but because they are a more durable medium than, for instance, wall
paintings or painting on wood. For late antiquity and the early middle ages, this evidence is
supplemented by manuscript illustrations, and for the high middle ages by sculpture and frescoes.
Again, to my knowledge no attempt has been made to collect and this material and analyze it in a
systematic manner, for instance to attempt a detailed identification of the fish that are depicted in
the pictorial evidence, or to study their spatial distribution. For instance, it is well known that fish
and fishing scenes are especially popular in North Africa during the third and fourth century; but
why?

Fish remains
A third category of sources, that deserves more attention than it has so far received, is the actual fish
themselves. Fish bones and other remains have been recorded at innumerable sites in the
Mediterranean-Black Sea region, and at a substantial number of sites there are rubbish dumps and
pits, the contents of which can be – but rarely are – dated and systematically analyzed.7 The most
ambitious attempt in this direction of which I am aware is Natasha Ivanova’s study of fish remains
from the Greek colony of Olbia and the settlement on Berezan island in the northwestern Black
Sea.8 Among the findings of Ivanova were a drastic change in the composition of fish catches (and
thus presumably fish stocks) from antiquity to the present day. This will come as no surprise to
HMAP researchers and marine biologists, but runs counter to what is still the prevalent orthodoxy

7
In 1996, Desse and Desse-Berset noted that „osteometry has not been systematically applied to fish bones from
archaeological sites“.
8
Natasha V. Ivanova, Fish remains from archaeological sites of the northern part of the Black Sea region (Olvia,
Berezan), Offa 51 (1994), pp. 278-83.

3
among ancient historians, that fish stocks can be treated as a stable variable and that fishing
statistics of the 19th or even the 20th centuries can cast light on the conditions under which ancient
fishermen worked.9 The concept of “shifting baselines” has not found its way into the study of
ancient fishing. Ivanova notes that sturgeon, which accounted for about 50% of the catch in
antiquity, today makes up no more than 3 to 4% of catches in the same area; its place has been
taken by carp, which nowadays makes up some 50% of catches but in antiquity only c. 16%. On the
other hand, some species, such as catfish, have maintained a remarkably stable share of the catch.
The figures I give here are based on the number of individuals, but since the average sturgeon is
much larger than a carp, the difference in terms of tonnage or nutritional value is even more
dramatic. Ivanova is also able to trace, century by century, changes in the average size of different
species and the age at which they are caught, though in this respect the picture is less clear.
Another, related approach is to take a stratified sample from the seabed, then analyzing the
composition of fish scales and bones to gain an impression of the species composition and how it
changes over the centuries, somewhat like pollen analysis from terrestrial sites. This will ideally
provide a time series of quantitative data, which are in such short supply in the ancient and early
medieval period, but the process is not without its problems, and in any case requires a substantial
input of time and money and also that the sample must be taken in an oxygen-free marine
environment.

Processed fish
Finally, we should not overlook the sources that deal with processed fish. In antiquity, the two
commercially most important products were salt-fish (tarichos) and fish-sauce (garum). The two
activities are chronologically distinct: the earliest evidence for salt-fish production in the Pontic
regions, whence it was exported to Athens, comes from the classical period, whereas fish sauce
becomes an important commodity only in the late Hellenistic and early Imperial period. They are
also distinct in terms of fish input: fish-salters would presumably go for the larger species, whereas
fish sauce could be made from smaller fish.
Apart from the fish itself, the only other inputs required for fish processing were salt and water,
which were readily available anywhere; so the geographical location of ancient fish processing

9
On this question, see Anne Lif Lund Jacobsen, The Reliability of Modern Fishing Statistics as a Source for Ancient
Catches, in Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen (ed.), Ancient Fishing and Fish Processing in the Black Sea Region (Black Sea
Studies, 2), Aarhus: Aarhus University Press (forthcoming).

4
establishments would tend to reflect the distribution and migration patterns of certain fish species,
such as mackerel, which was particularly valued as raw material for fish sauce. Fish salting
installations and containers – amphorae – for fish products together provide important evidence,
even quantitative data, not for fish stocks, but for the impact on fish stocks of human exploitation,
which is of course equally important. Since the goal of HMAP is to understand the long-term
fluctuations in fish stocks, it is not enough to establish that marine populations flkuctuate but also, a
much more difficult question, why. Which brings me to the second part of my paper.

Fish in context
Speaking as an historian, and not as a specialist on the development of marine populations, I would
say that we can only understand what happens in a sea if we view it in context, or rather in plural:
contexts. On the one hand its societal context, on the other its environmental context. Obviously
variations in fish stocks reflect variations in the marine environment, such as changes in salinity,
rising or falling sea temperature, introduction of new fish species, availability of food (e.g. plankton
or smaller species), etc. The long-term temperature fluctuation has been extensively studied and is
well documented. Short-term climatic fluctuations, e.g. the impact of El Niño, can also be traced.
For these, we have the evidence of the ice cores taken from the Greenland ice cap, whose
stratification can yield information about individual years.10 Unfortunately, the chronology
proposed by the ice core teams does not quite tally with the accepted chronology for antiquity.
We have valuable, unbroken data series for the rise of the Nile at Cairo going back to the seventh
century AD, with fragmentary series for even earlier periods.11 Since El Niño affects the spring
rainfall in eastern Africa, but more generally the summer climate in the entire Mediterranean basin,
it is generally accepted that the Nilometer data can be used to postdict El Niño-type phenomena in
the early middle ages and perhaps even earlier. The most difficult climatic phenomena to deal with
are those which are at once short-term and unique, such as the series of cold summers in the early
sixth century, probably related to a large-scale volcanic eruption in southeast Asia.12 This is known
to us because it took place during the lifetime of the historian Prokopios, who described it; it is also

10
E.g., the Greenland Ice Sheet Projects 2 (GISP2), 1988-1993, and the Greenland Ice Core Project (GRIP), ongoing.
11
G. Wang. Nilometers, El Nino, and Climate Variability, Geophysical Research Letters, 26 (1999) 489-92; O.
Toussoun. Memoire sur l'Histoire du Nil. Memoires a l'Institut d'Egypte 18 (1925) 366-404; L. Borchardt, Nilmessern
und Nilstandsmarken (Abhandlungen der königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1906, Anhang,
Philsoophische und historische Abhandlungen) ) Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1906; C. Jarvis. Flood-Stage Records of the
River Nile, Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers 101 (1936) 1012-71.
12 Joel D. Gunn (ed.), The Years without Summer: Tracing AD 536 and its Aftermath (British Archaeological Reports
International Series, 872) Oxford: Archaeopress, 2000.

5
traceable in the Greenland ice cores as a layer of ash. Similar if less drastic climatic phenomena are
recorded by later Byzantine historians but this evidence has apparently not so far been studied in a
systematic fashion; or if it has, the results have not, to my knowledge, been published in an
international journal. A further source of information on year-by-year variations are
dendrochronological time series of tree rings.
It would be useful to correlate the anecdotal evidence for climatic extremes from the Nilometer
data, tree ring data and the evidence of the ice cores, and with other information such as that of the
early medieval monastic annalists who sometimes record climatic extremes, floods and so on. The
History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours, for instance, contains a good deal of such information
that was presumably taken from monastic or diocesan annals.13
On the other hand there is the societal context. In the pre-industrial period, i.e. before c. 1850, this is
generally less important for fluctuations in fish stocks than the environmental context, but not
entirely irrelevant. Since humans are in the last analysis predators, their presence or absence on
shore influences the marine population. Demographic growth in the coastal zone up to c. 30
kilometres from the sea will lead to greater consumption of fresh sea fish and more fishing;
demographic growth further inland would have little impact on the consumption of fresh fish. The
introduction of fish-salting on a commercial scale, however, extended the marketing range of fish,
and the spread of garum as a cheap commodity for mass consumption throughout the Roman
Empire created a demand for large amounts of industrial fish such as mackerel or anchovies.
Processed fish is an especially promising field of study for the archaeologist because it is
transported in containers of durable materials such as pottery. The remains of fish sauce containers
are scattered throughout the Roman Empire, though mainly concentrated in urban areas; in some
exceptional cases, fish sauce amphorae account for one-third of all amphora fragments found on a
city site.
The extent of fish consumption in prehistoric societies can be estimated not only from dumps of fish
waste but through isotope studies of human skeletons; I believe that Greek scientists were the first
to apply this technique, which led to some revision of our ideas about fish-eating Minoans and
Myceneans. More recently it has been applied to Roman material from central Italy.
Even if we do not have quantitative data, it would certainly be possible to give a rough idea of the
development of fish consumption throughout antiquity, taking into account such documented
variables as fish prices, population growth or decline, degree of urbanization, dietary restrictions of

13
E.g., Historia franconum 6.25 on the weather in AD 583.

6
a religious nature, and changes in culinary preferences. Garum, which at one time was as
widespread in Roman cuisine as tomato ketchup is among us, went out of fashion in late antiquity;
this must have meant that certain species were no longer fished at all, save as by-catches. The
decline of the monetary economy in the western Mediterranean must have meant a corresponding
decline in the market for salt-fish; and so on.

A test case: the Black Sea

To sum up: there is a large body of evidence, written, pictorial and archaeological, for fish stocks
and fishing in the ancient world, less so for the late antique and early medieval period. It is a
challenging, some would say daunting, task to combine these disparate sources of data into a
coherent picture of the development of fish stocks in the pre-medieval Mediterranean-Black Sea
region. But it is feasible? And what kind of effort is required? One way to find out is a pilot project,
and the Black Sea with its adjunct, the Sea of Azov, might provide a suitable test case. The Black
Sea shares many of the characteristics of the Mediterranean, to which it is connected, but has certain
specific characteristics that make it more manageable.
First, it is not a very large body of water from our point of view. The Black Sea is deep, but from a
couple of hundred metres downwards it is anoxic and thus irrelevant to marine animal populations
of any description. The coastal shelf to the northwest is quite shallow.
Second, it is a very young body of water. The Black Sea as we understand it now is only some
7,000 years old, formed when the salt water of the Mediterranean breached the Bosporus. In writing
the ecohistory of the Black Sea, we are dealing with a short time span. For the same reasons, there
are fewer saltwater species in the Black Sea than in the Mediterranean – today, c. 170 and in
antiquity even fewer.
Along the northern coast there are several archaeological sites with large dumps of fish waste, going
back as far as the sixth to seventh century BC, from which it might be possible to extract data
allowing us to follow the changing composition of fish catches. There are also remains of extensive
fish salting and processing installations at a number of sites. The Black Sea has a long history of
scientific study, so there is much published and archival data to work from. The downside is that the
literary sources are not that plentiful, but there is a substantial body of epigraphic evidence, which is
currently being re-edted by a team at the university of Bordeaux. Finally, since the lower Black Sea
is an anoxic environment, it will be possible to verify the results of the pilot study against seabed
sediment samples.

7
Author’s address:

Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen, dr.phil.

senior researcher
Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre for Black Sea Studies
Building 328
University of Aarhus
DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark

www.pontos.dk
e-mail: tonnes@hist.sdu.dk